Every Step Of The Way
by Mandy ChE
Summary: George is continuing to struggle with the loss of his twin's companionship. Can a brilliant witch help him to forget and regain his confidence?


**Disclaimer:** I don't own, will not profit from, and did not create anything involving the world of Harry Potter. That good fortune and brilliance belongs to the wonderful JKR.

**Author's Note: **This is the first piece of fanfiction I've ever written. I'm sure it isn't very good, and the idea turned out a little bit differently than when I originally thought of it, but let me know what you think anyway.

Thanks!

-Mandy

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"_That's not fair! I drew that for mum! Not you!"_

_The little boy chased after his twin, both of them barging into the kitchen, where their mother was preparing dinner. Skidding around the table and evading his brother's grasp, the leading twin raised up the piece of parchment in his hand, grabbing the back of his mother's dress with the other._

"_Mum! Mum! Look what I made for you!"_

"_He did not!"_

"_Did so!"_

_The boys' mother took the small picture of their lopsided house, its nine inhabitants, and some tiny little creatures that looked like potatoes with arms that she could only assume were supposed to be gnomes from her son's hand. She beamed down at the boy who had handed her the piece of parchment._

"_Why, Fred, it's lovely! Thank you darling." Molly said, reaching down to hug her five-year-old son._

_Fred's twin glared at him. Tugging on his mother's sleeve, he protested._

"_Mum, Fred didn't draw you that picture! I did! He stole it from me!" George complained, his eyes beginning to fill with tears at the injustice of it all._

_His mother looked down at her other twin son's face, which was slowly becoming scrunched up in a sob. She believed his story, knowing that although both of her sons were little troublemakers, one was slightly worse than the other. And she knew that the (sometimes) quieter and overshadowed of the two was the small boy who was standing in front of her on the verge of tears. She leaned down and wrapped her arms around George._

"_It's alright my dear. It doesn't matter which one of you drew the picture, it means very much to me that you both love me enough to want to make me happy." Molly whispered, pulling back to smile at her son._

_George hesitated, then smiled faintly at his mother._

"_There we go!" Molly said, straightening up and beaming at her sons' twin faces. She turned back to the carrots she had been chopping. "Now I want the two of you to go play outside until dinner. Go on, shoo!"_

_By the time she turned around, the two had scampered off. She turned back to her work, smiling to herself._

_George glared at his brother. He was seriously considering the idea of throwing his wand aside and sending a fist crashing upside his twin's head._

_Fred was glaring back with equal intensity. He could not understand why George was upset; he had done nothing wrong._

"_Look, mate, it's not my fault you didn't make any attempt to get a date on your own. One opened up, and I didn't want you to be stranded without a girl, so I accepted! I didn't think you'd throw such a damn fit!" Fred protested hotly._

_George continued to glare daggers at the redhead standing in front of him. The two rarely fought, but when they did, it was always intense, simply _because _they never fought. The two were standing face to face in their dormitory in Gryffindor Tower, fists clenched, the room vacant due to their altercation._

"_It's not going with Katie that I have a problem with," George snarled. "It's you thinking you're the bloody spokesman for the two of us. No one put you in charge of me, and we may think damn near exactly the same, but it would still be nice if you would ask me before you make a decision that concerns me."_

"_I wasn't trying to speak for you, you great git!" Fred retorted. "I was trying to help you out! After I asked Angelina, she simply brought up that Katie didn't have a date to the Yule Ball, and I mentioned that you didn't either. She said she knew Katie would like to go with you, and I figured it would be a good idea, for us to go with two girls who are friends. Because before you threw this stupid fit, the two of us were friends too!"_

_George put a hand over his eyes in frustration. He took a few deep breaths before looking at his twin, the anger still not completely gone from his face._

"_You don't get it do you, you great prat? You never have seen it."_

_Fred stared blankly at his brother._

"_What in the name of Merlin are you talking about?"_

_George sighed, beginning to grow angry again. He turned away from Fred._

"_You've always been the more noticeable one of the two of us. We may be twins, but we are not exactly alike. You're always the one that people notice, the one that people talk to, the one who speaks for the two of us. It's always 'Fred and George', never 'George and Fred.' That's the way it's always been, and sometimes it makes me so jealous I can't stand it. Right now is one of those times. Katie Bell is sweet, and I've no problem taking her as a date, but she's the submissive one in her and Angelina's relationship. She's the quiet one who goes along with whatever Angelina says, because Angelina is the one who makes the decisions. I don't want our relationship to turn into one like theirs. I don't want one of us to be dominant; I want us both to be equals. I want us deciding things together and acting like the team that we work best as."_

_George turned to look at his twin, all the anger gone from his chocolate brown eyes to be replaced by sadness and pleading._

_Fred stared at his brother for a moment or two, before striding forward and pulling him into a big bear hug. Tears threatened to fill his eyes, which matched the sadness in the brown eyes of his brother that looked just like his own._

"_George, mate, I'm sorry. I never knew you felt like that. I've always loved that we were just alike. We were always able to know what each other needed and how we were feeling. I can't believe I missed all this. I promise, I've never tried to go over you. We're a team, and I want us to stay that way. So if I'm being an arrogant, show-offy git, just tell me, alright?" Fred grinned, releasing his twin, who grinned back at him._

"_Right. And if I'm being a moping, jealous idiot, tell me, ok?"_

"_But of course, dear brother! Now, shall we go make some mischief to celebrate yet another happy outcome of one of our rows?" Fred exclaimed, extending his elbow out to his brother._

"_Why yes, let's!" George stated pompously, taking his brother's elbow as the two skipped off down the dormitory stairs to create some of the pandemonium that they were famous for._

George moaned against the hot mouth of the writhing witch below him. She groaned in response and continued dragging her fingernails across his exposed back.

He fumbled erratically with the buttons on her blouse, desperate to get his hands inside her warm clothing. Finally, he ripped the shirt open in frustration, sending the remaining buttons flying across the room in all directions.

She let out a loud, throaty moan as the heat of his mouth and tongue left hers and covered her left nipple through the silk of her bra. George's hand reached up to pinch and caress her other nipple through the soft fabric as his hot mouth continued to harden the one it was working on. She writhed beneath him, the wiggling shooting pleasure straight to his already painfully swollen groin.

He groaned and reached his hands around her back to unhook the flimsy black undergarment. Tearing it off her, he threw it aside and returned his mouth to her breast. His lips latched onto her nipple, laving it with his tongue, while his hand pinched and squeezed the other bud.

She nearly screamed in pleasure, contenting herself to bury her hands in his flaming red hair. Her hips bucked against him as jolts of fiery pleasure shot from her nipples to her core. A moan escaped his lips as she bucked against him, and he subconsciously pressed his growing erection harder between her legs.

As his tongue continued its tantalizingly sinful tormenting of her breasts, one of George's hands began to snake its way down her body, while the other held a fistful of her bushy brown hair. His hand fumbled with the button on her jeans, desperate to enter them. She moaned impatiently and removed her hands from his hair to aid him in the removal of her pants. She swiftly unfastened them and pushed them down, along with her knickers. Grateful, George's hot mouth left the perfect globes of her breasts long enough to give her a quick, heated, and dizzying kiss before returning to its former torment.

The curly-headed witch gasped and jumped as she felt George's nimble fingers stroking, pinching, and caressing her sensitive nub of nerves. She moaned loudly, feeling herself falling further and further towards the edge. Inspired by her reaction, George's fingers suddenly stopped what they were doing, and she was about to protest until she felt his finger slip deep into her wet heat. They both gasped, she at how good it felt, and he at how unbelievably tight she was. He slipped in another finger to join the first and began sliding them in and out, loving how tight and wet she was and the way she was squirming beneath him.

George's fingers continued their relentless pace and his head lowered from where he had been watching her to attack her nipples with renewed fervor. She moaned and writhed under him, barely able to retain coherent thought. When his thumb reached up to press against her nub of nerves, it was all she could do not to scream. She was so close...

She ran her hands up George's arms and onto his shoulders. Not knowing how else to handle the pleasure that was overtaking her, she dug her fingernails into his shoulder blades. He let out a throaty moan against her breast in response. That did it.

The rumbling vibration of his moan against her breast went straight through her and she fell over the edge. She screamed as the orgasm hit her, the pleasure exploding inside her and flowing through every part, every nerve of her body. She was breathless, and as the wave finally began to ebb, her brain made her breathe a name in thanks.

"_Fred."_

They both froze. She believed that they had stopped breathing. She felt George's hand leave her heat and he sat back on his knees to look at her intensely.

Hermione's terrified brown eyes stared back into his.

George stared at her for a moment, and she saw all of the lust and desire instantly vanish from his soft brown eyes. In its place, she saw pain and sorrow. He turned away from her and sat on the edge of the bed, simply staring at the wall.

Hermione slowly sat up, her brilliant mind both berating her fiercely for being so stupid and trying to figure out the right thing to do or say to convince this red-headed wizard that she was in love with him, not his deceased twin.

Right as she scooted forward and her hand was an inch above his shoulder, he spoke.

"He always was the better one."

Hermione was puzzled, and opened her mouth to either protest or question him, she wasn't sure which, when she noticed that he was about to continue talking, and shut it again.

"I told him so once. I told him he was a prat and that I was tired of him talking for both of us. I was tired of him acting like the leader every now and then, even though we worked as a team. That's just the way it was. Most people wouldn't know it, but he was always the dominant one, if only just a tiny bit. Even when we were little, that's how it was. We both tried to get the attention of our parents constantly, but he would either always try harder or succeed more. It used to drive me crazy."

She was startled to see that there were tears flowing freely from the redhead's closed eyes. Trying to offer some semblance of comfort, she wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. He seemed not to notice this act as he kept speaking.

"The thing is, I never realized how much I relied on that about him until he was gone. I know it's been six years, but I can't get over his death. Not only because he was my twin and my brother, but because he would always be able to take charge. If I ever didn't want to be in the spotlight, he could take over. If there was something that I couldn't handle alone, he always made sure to help. He just associated with people better than I did, and now that I've been thrown out into the world to fend for myself without him, I'm realizing how much I depended on him."

"George, I'm so sorry," Hermione whispered, now wiping tears from her own eyes.

George looked over, appearing to notice her for the first time. His eyes were still brimmed with sorrow as he looked into hers.

"I don't want to be a failure. I don't want to fail you."

Hermione suddenly knew what she had to do. Catching his lips with hers, she kissed him passionately, their tears mingling as their cheeks touched. The kiss was rough and full of the pain they both still felt at the loss of their redheaded companion.

She climbed on top of his lap and laid him down on the bed, her lips never leaving his. Tonight, she would prove to him that he could never fail her. She would show him that he was who she loved. And she would make him realize that even without his twin, he would have the strength to go on, because she would be with him every step of the way.

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_Thanks for reading! Please review! :)_


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